What is JD Vance doing to Ohio?

This may be one of the better pods we’ve done yet, Christian having the flu notwithstanding. John came prepared with the questions, digging into the impacts of JD Vance’s lies (yes, lies) about Haitian immigrants and the people of Springfield, Ohio — people who Vance represents in the United States Senate.

Zooming out from the very real harm Vance and his unhinged and baseless accusations are causing, we dig into why this line of attack would work in the first place. How is it that people would even believe such an obvious falsehood, and a ridiculous one at that? And why is a rumor that’s inherently racist in nature almost guaranteed to gain traction above all others?

We get into Trump’s equally appalling and ongoing attacks on Kamala Harris’ ancestry and identity, and try to answer the question of why he and Vance can’t seem to understand how babies are made and why their ancestry would be mixed. Of course, this begs the far bigger and less political question of why, more than 400 years after colonization and nearly 250 years after independence, are so many Americans preoccupied with another person’s ancestry, particularly those of mixed ancestry?

It’s a deep dive under the surface of what’s happening in our politics. A little history, a little amateur sociology, and surprisingly, a few laughs along the way. Hope you enjoy.

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